No country’s music scene is completely immune from unwarranted hype, but I get the sense the problem is particularly bad in the U.K., where it seems a new band of college students is decreed the next U2 every other week, most of them faceless facsimiles of British bands from the ’70s and ’80s. In particular, it’s hard to think of any major music publication less discriminating in its recommendations than NME, the U.K.’s inordinately influential music magazine. Seldom have kingmakers held a lower standard for the throne. For every truly novel band they herald (say, The xx), they push dozens of Klaxons, Wombats and Cribs, indie-rockers of the most forgettable sort.
So as a general rule, I tune out NME’s recommendations, trusting American media to separate the wheat from the chaff. There’s one band that’s currently being fed through the British hype cycle right now, however, that actually deserves the attention, but hasn’t yet made much noise stateside: Delphic, a Manchester group that this week released its debut album, Acolyte, to wide acclaim from British media (for what that’s worth). They don’t sound particularly exciting on paper: Their electronic-rock nods to Factory Records bands like New Order, but their sound is warmer and more expansive than those comparisons suggest, indebted to the big-hearted electro-pop of Hot Chip. Acolyte is a fantastic debut, packed with huge choruses, dynamic swells, unexpected tangents and enough savvy nods to contemporary electronic music to distinguish Delphic from the hordes of New-Wave-by-numbers dance-rock bands.
The entire album is streaming on the band's MySpace page. The video for the single "Doubt" is posted below:
